Sunday, May 15, 2016

Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’: ‘When Music Videos Used to Be Normal.’

Nirvana remains mysteriously loved by Generation X and others, with a disturbing amount of people insisting that the unintelligible “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is the BEST SONG EVER WRITTEN. Nevertheless, one current teenager made an insightful observation about the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” music video: it seems mild by today’s standards.

Nirvana was considered vulgar at the height of its popularity in the 1990s. A lot of people liked the group but it was still easy enough to find mainstream cultural figures and everyday people who identified the group’s lyrics, lifestyle, and behavior as repulsive.

But the American culture Nirvana helped tear down has become much worse, and as the teenaged girl at the 1:04 mark in the below video hints, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” seems like “the good ol’ days.”

“When music videos used to be normal. Nobody is stripping in this one.” That’s an insightful observation (intentional or not) about where American culture is. And things are only going to decay more from here.